


desire, hope, and love

by tsunderestorm



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Ficlet, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-29
Updated: 2018-11-29
Packaged: 2019-09-02 03:25:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16778653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsunderestorm/pseuds/tsunderestorm
Summary: Even Yusuke's masterful skills cannot convey Akira's radiance.





	desire, hope, and love

Yusuke is an artist, classically trained and modernly educated - he could paint anything if the inspiration were only to strike him. He can paint the shadows that he remembers on the walls of his childhood room, the blur of colorful yukata he remembers when Madarame’s atelier had been filled with disciples, or the memory of a landscape so vividly green it made him cry. He can paint a portrait, and though it’s nothing like the Sayuri he knows he can capture an essence well. He can paint feelings; abstract renditions of betrayal, anger, sadness: a multicolored spectrum of emotions in a search for his understanding of beauty.

He cannot paint Akira. His savior is perfectly defined - smooth lines and sharp edges, no abstracts. He is his own person, the essence of who he is and the absence of what he isn’t as stark as black paint on a virgin-white canvas. He is integrity, he is bravery...he is a steady stone in turbulent waters. He is cat-like in his grace, nimble and quick, he is perfection made real, Pygmalion’s art made flesh and blood, the trickster who holds all of humanity’s future in his hand. How can Yusuke hope to paint the mere embodiment of beauty?

He paints _Desire_ after their trip to Mementos, deep reds and blacks in splashes across the page, and it is imperfect - he discovers nothing about himself but that he misunderstands, he is imperfect, he is the burden Madarame always told him he was. He is simply not enough.

He paints _Desire and Hope_ when provoked, a caged beast beckoned out of his cage with creativity run wildand he discovers everything about himself - he is enough, he has always been enough. He has always seen the brightness of beauty in the darkness even if his lack of socialization leaves him falling short of understanding it. He has a lot to learn and a lot of ground to cover, but that’s alright. He is ten times the person Madarame convinced him he was; a celebrated artist in his own right instead of the tool his once-trusted teacher had forced his shape into. 

He learns one more thing creating his second painting post-Madarame - he is in love with their fearless leader. 

As he adds the last stroke of bright yellow hope and steps back to admire his work, he thinks of Akira. Cloak blowing in the wake of a battle with his grey eyes bright as diamonds behind his mask, handsome in the suit and tie that he wears to Yusuke’s second gallery show, casual in his Shujin polo and trousers with an easy smile on his face. He saved him, Yusuke thinks - brought him back from the brink, empowered him, saved him from the self-inflicted fate that Nakanohara had been so worried about. 

He thinks he’ll call his next painting _Love_. 


End file.
